Interviews

World of Warcraft - Lead Designer Rob Pardo

GameSpy grills WoW's lead designer with 10 questions about the process of game creation.

While everyone on a development team has an important role to play, there's one person who's always designated the "keeper of the flame." He or she is tasked with understanding the game as a whole and making sure that the focus of the game doesn't get lost in the inevitable flood of great ideas, mishaps, and occasional setbacks that dog any development project. In the case of World of Warcraft, that person was Rob Pardo, the game's lead designer. GameSpy got the opportunity to launch 10 questions at Pardo, grilling him about the game's overall vision and just a little tease of what's to come now that the game is launching.

GameSpy: Take us back to the beginning of the design process. What were your goals going into the game and how close do you think you've achieving them?

Rob Pardo: When we first started making World of Warcraft, there were three major components to the game. One, of course, was the adventuring aspect of the game, where you play against A.I.-controlled monsters and the environment with a group of friends. The second component is what we internally call the "World is Toy" aspect: making sure there are plenty of things to do in the world that are fun but that have nothing to do with character advancement. The third component is player-versus-player gameplay. All the games that Blizzard has released have always been competitive, and players look to us to provide that type of play. So we felt that had to be a core component of World of Warcraft

With the released version of the game, I feel like the adventuring aspect is outstanding and the PvP aspect is already very fun. Once the battlegrounds and reward system are in, PvP will be great. Our "world as toy" goal will be accomplished mainly post-release through the addition of various world events.

GameSpy: When you were putting together the initial design for the world, why did you choose to orient so much of the gameplay around the questing system rather than making the gameplay more open ended?

Rob Pardo: There were a couple reasons for this approach. First, we found that many new players to a MMORPG really do not know what to do when they start the game. While some people do enjoy finding their own way in the world, we felt like most players want to immediately have purpose and goals to accomplish, like in most other gaming genres. Secondly, having a large variety of quests lets you focus on goals rather than just finding monsters to repetitively kill for experience and levels. We called this philosophy "killing with a purpose," and it really allows players to focus on the game rather than their experience bar and level.